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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23214496">Close Your Eyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterBrush/pseuds/MonsterBrush'>MonsterBrush</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>(Don't) Open Your Eyes (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Horror, POV First Person, alternative good ending, hand holding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:21:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,408</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23214496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterBrush/pseuds/MonsterBrush</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative to the "good" ending of (Don't) Open Your Eyes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>181</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Close Your Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first night they came to me, the hallway looked strange. This was something to note, because the hallway had never looked strange like this before. No matter how tired I was. I thought I had imagined it. The footsteps. The sudden weight of a pair of hands resting on the edge of my bed. The voice that whispered to me. “<em>Hey… Open your eyes,</em>” over and over. They’d never seen themself before, and they wanted me to tell them how they looked. And I’d opened my eyes, because I’d been afraid, and curious, and eager to dispel my imaginings. </p><p>I know my room. I know every inch, every detail, I pride myself on this. I cataloged everything about it. And not a hair was out of place. The hallway looked how it always did. The night was as noisy as it always was. My unease had vanished. I was finally too tired to care, and sleep found me at last. A good thing too, I must have been more exhausted than I’d thought, for me to imagine such things. </p><p>By the time I made my way down the hall and into the kitchen the memory of the previous night had all but faded into obscurity. I needed coffee. </p><p>My routine was resolute. I never minded the monotony much. It kept my mind on track. I had things to do. A job. Friends. A life. </p><p>But the next night that they came to me, the hallway looked strange again. I’d just counted my steps on my way down the hall, the same way I always do. One, two, three… Ten steps, the same number as always. I’d read another chapter or two of my book. I’d given my room the usual cursory glance, ensuring that everything was still in its place, and I’d noticed the hallway again. Dark, swallowing everything that came near, even the light. I could not see through it to the room beyond, and that was not normal. When I finally returned my book to the nightstand and turned off the light, it wasn’t long before I heard the footsteps again. </p><p>That night they asked me how I thought they looked… What did their eyes look like? I thought about the voice I heard, trying to picture the eyes that came with it. </p><p>Their eyes… I supposed they looked lost. I did not say this aloud, I was afraid to, I think, but they agreed with me as if I had. “<em>That may be so </em>,” they’d said. And they’d told me why. They’d told me how lost they were, and I’d felt sorry for them. It must be horrible, to wander the way they did, confused and alone. Afraid to miss whatever it was they searched for, when they finally found it. They asked me to see for myself, if the eyes I imagined held true. But when I opened my eyes, nothing new came to greet me in my familiar, never changing room. Even the hallway was the same as it always looked. I could see the living room beyond, the sofa illuminated by the streetlights shining in through the adjacent window. </p><p>I tried not to feel disappointed. I was tired enough, so this was an easy task. I wanted to sleep, so I did, and nothing new graced my senses. I awoke the next morning feeling nothing amiss. Everything was exactly how it had always been. </p><p>However, the unusual darkness in the hallway was beginning to stick in my weary mind by the third time I saw it. My faithful companion on the nightstand--the book--had lost my interest by now. Again they asked me how I thought they might look. </p><p>Their eyes looked broken, I thought. Because if I lived the way they claimed to be living, I think I would look broken too. “<em>That may be so,</em>” they’d said, and the cracking sound that filled my ears had made me want to flinch when I’d first heard it. It sounded painful. Why are they doing that? I wanted to tell them to stop. They were making it worse, whatever it was that ailed them. But again, there was nothing when I finally cast my gaze across the darkened bedroom. </p><p>Sleep was harder to find after that night. </p><p>I did not forget the strangeness of the hallway again, so when next it caught my notice as I repeated my nightly ritual, I knew what to expect. The footsteps, the voice, the breathing. I was ready for it. It was a strange feeling. </p><p>Their eyes looked empty, I pictured this time. “<em>That may be so</em>,” they’d said again. Someone told them once, that they had no soul. Maybe that someone was right. The voice certainly seemed to agree with that person, because they said nothing to refute the claim. I wasn’t the first person they’d tried to communicate with. </p><p>This time, I did not open my eyes. They didn’t seem upset with my decision. </p><p>Doors were apparently tricky for the voice. I had the feeling that they agonized over everything they came across, because everything about a door seemed to cause them stress. Opening it, closing it, being able to get in, not being able to get in. They liked that my door was open, I think. I always left it open. It was a habit. I liked to see what was in the hallway. </p><p>The voice, I decided then, was a bit of a hypocrite. They want to be seen, but they hide in the shadows and travel at night to avoid being seen. They demand I open my eyes, but when I do they are never there. “Shy”, they’d called themselves once. They never sounded shy when they demanded I look at them. </p><p>Their hands, they wanted to know what I thought of those next… tired, incomplete, deceitful… It didn’t matter how I pictured them, they never showed themself to me when my eyes opened. Six nights, and still nothing to show for it. I don’t know why I even bothered. Or why I didn’t just shut my door for once, if it really gave the voice so much trouble. Although, they might just find their way in anyway despite the trouble at this point. They kept coming back, and I kept letting them. </p><p>Their expression…? At first I thought perhaps they’d be happy that they’d finally know what they’ve always wondered about, so I pictured a smile, and they seemed to agree. I suppose I’d wanted to picture a happy ending for them. I’ve always loved happy endings. Who doesn’t? </p><p>But then again, they might be dissatisfied by the result. I know for a fact that there are things in this world that can disappoint. No matter how desperate you are for one outcome, undesired alternatives can always rear their heads and spoil what you’d hoped for. A low expectation is always safer. </p><p>A grimace then, perhaps. Though I disliked the thought, it seemed a more likely outcome, given how they seemed to agonize over everything, paralyzed by indecision at every crossroads they came across. Every time I opened my eyes, they were gone. They chose to hide, if they were a separate being that could make such choices, and not just a figment of my imagination. They chose to remain unseen, an outcome they were familiar, and yet, unsatisfied with. What a frustrating being. I surely would not have imagined such a thing. That is how my exhausted mind rationalized their existence. </p><p>Perhaps their expression would be as blank as their eyes were empty, if that was the way their eyes might look. I wouldn’t know. They never showed me. But again they agreed with my unspoken theory. They insisted that although expressions were difficult--perhaps even impossible--for them, they were feeling things nonetheless, though they never mentioned what those feelings were. Their insistence did nothing to reassure me. </p><p>I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t there for me to see when I looked for them again. This was becoming tiresome. When at first I would fall asleep unbothered by the voice I heard, by now I was waking feeling unrested and out of sorts. I laid awake longer and longer each time after opening my eyes to nothing, just thinking. My mind raced every morning, recalling the previous night. The voice, they occupied my thoughts now. They did not vanish. I remembered them, and pondered. They grew more real to me with every one sided conversation I had with them. </p><p>I am certain now that they exist beyond my realm of understanding. Funny how sleep deprivation can temper one’s mind to such a concept. It was so easy to dismiss before, to write off as nothing more than a dream. So long as I do not acknowledge it outside of myself, to others, it doesn’t bother me. I know what others might think. What I might think, if I were not the one experiencing it. So I didn’t bother to seek anyone out, to share my troubles with them. But maybe I should have... </p><p>I think the sleep deprivation was finally getting to me. At first, I remained silent out of fear perhaps. Paralyzed by the presence of something unfamiliar, too scared to react, lest that create an unfavorable outcome. I was no better than the voice that visited me in that regard. But no longer. I was sick and tired of holding my tongue for their monologues. They’d ask for my experiences and I would say nothing, because the answers were too complex for my weary mind to formulate. And it was easier to lay there and do nothing. Safer. </p><p>But the repetition was grating on me now. This was a routine that I could no longer tolerate. When next the voice came to visit, and demanded I open my eyes, I made a demand of my own.</p><p>“You close your eyes,” I said aloud. </p><p>It was hard to make myself speak in the voice’s presence, the action felt wrong, taboo, inappropriate, all my instincts shouting at me that remaining silent was the better option, but I wasn’t in the mood for the usual pointless demands that the voice always made. The ones that led to nowhere. My silence was the only other common denominator that I could control, other than the decision to open my eyes. </p><p>Compared to the soft whispers of the voice that spoke to me, my own voice was startlingly loud. The silence that followed was heavy, and for a moment I wondered if my words had dispelled them just like opening my eyes always did. The sound of it left me feeling raw and exposed. Vulnerable, in a way that lying helpless beside a stranger with my eyes closed hadn’t. It felt like I had just made a horrible mistake. My own voice scared me worse in that moment than the whispers that caressed my ear with each cool breath. </p><p>“<em>Why?” </em> The faint reply came at last. It was impossible to gauge whether they were surprised by my broken silence, but I liked to think that they were. </p><p>I couldn’t respond. It had taken everything I had just to speak once. My body was afraid. My mind should have been too, but I suppose it hadn’t caught up just yet. </p><p>I thought that, maybe, if they closed their eyes, they wouldn’t hide from me when I opened mine. That had been the logic that my weary mind had strung together. But I couldn’t phrase this aloud. My tongue felt swollen and numb in my mouth now. </p><p>“<em>Your voice… it is just like I imagined,</em>” the voice gave a breathy sigh. “<em>But... you will not see my eyes if they are closed.</em>” </p><p>I couldn’t take it. I needed to reset. I did the only thing I could think of. The only way to recover from the horrific blunder I had made, of acknowledging their presence. I opened my eyes.</p><p>Nothing was there. </p><p>That cheater. </p><p>“You didn’t close your eyes,” I told the darkened bedroom, defeated. </p><p>Of course they hadn’t closed their eyes for me. I felt foolish for suggesting it now, as I pondered the previous night over a steaming mug of coffee, watching the day begin outside my kitchen window. </p><p>They’d told me, during one of the first nights that they’d visited, that they were afraid to close them. Because they were lost, and looking for something, but they didn’t know what it was. They wondered if it was nearby, if it was of flesh and bone, if it was <em> me </em>, even. If I had been what they were looking for, they would have missed it. That is why they hid.</p><p>Fine. I had already resigned myself to being visited by the whispering voice again. And as usual, I was not surprised. The hallway was dark again that night, and I didn’t even bother distracting myself with the book on my nightstand. I hadn’t picked it up in over a week anyway. I barely even remembered what it was about at that point. </p><p>There were the footsteps not long after I’d closed my eyes. I waited for them to come to a halt beside my bed, and for the brush of skin against fabric as their hands settled on my sheets. </p><p>“<em>... Hey.</em>” That first whisper always gave me a chill. Gooseflesh erupting across my body as ice flooded my veins. The sensation was akin to the first moments after awakening suddenly from a bad dream, cold despite however many blankets you might have bundled yourself in, all your senses on high alert, searching for the cause of this abrupt feeling of mortal peril. Finding nothing, but feeling terrified regardless. An involuntary chill. </p><p>“<em>Open your eyes.</em>”</p><p><em> You’ll just hide again. </em> I thought flatly, at odds with the pounding of my heart. The voice had mentioned others have spoken to them before, why can’t I do the same?</p><p>The voice was used to talking to the open air, formulating their own thoughts and assumptions, rambling in an uninterrupted stream to fill the silence of an unresponsive listener. They had already told me so much, unprompted. </p><p>It was odd, and they’d said it themselves, how odd it was for them to be so concerned about their appearance, and yet so uncaring for it at the same time. They wanted to know, but they didn’t care. They wanted to be seen, but they actively avoided it. They were trapped in a stalemate of their own making. Paralyzed by indecision, stuck staring at the closed door, too afraid to open it, unsure where to start. </p><p>They thought, or perhaps even <em> hoped </em>, that I would break this pattern. That is why they actively sought me, through my open door, disregarding their usual anxieties, accepting my unintentional invitation. They wanted to be seen now, more than they wanted to hide. But the feeling was not strong enough. They still hid every time I made the choice to open my eyes. But they would make themselves heard.</p><p>“<em>You want to see me... You want to see everything... You leave your door open to see beyond it. You look at your room and you commit it to memory... You… you would commit me to memory too, wouldn’t you... every detail… make me... real…</em>” Desperation tainted their words with every breath. The raw yearning made my chest ache in sympathy and twinge in discomfort at the same time. “<em>You would do that for me… wouldn’t you? </em>”</p><p>They were wrong. I didn’t want to see them. I was afraid, wasn’t I? It was only right to be. They were something I should be afraid of. That was what some subconscious part of my brain was telling me. </p><p>“<em>Answer me.</em>”</p><p>I couldn’t.</p><p>“<em>... Don’t be scared.</em>”</p><p>I <em> was </em> scared, I think. Where had my boldness from the previous night gone? Why had I been so bold in the first place? Why did I have to take such an initiative, to let the voice know I was listening? Instead of lying there, passive and silent, hoping it would go away and let me sleep? And, as if privy to those half panicked musings, the voice riffed off of my desolate thoughts with another one of their tangents. </p><p>“<em>It is so much easier for me, when someone else decides things for me... What I look like… Whether I hide… Whether I stay… Sometimes, I wonder if you even hear me. If I even exist… But… I know you are listening… Do you… regret? Do you regret speaking to me? Will you regret looking at me? </em>”</p><p>I didn’t know. I didn’t <em> want </em> to know. God, I really was just like them… </p><p>No sooner had this occurred to me did the voice speak again. </p><p>“<em>I knew it.” </em> They said, and the breath puffing against my ear got even closer somehow. The breath was cold. It made the gooseflesh prickling along my arms worse. “<em>You </em> are <em> like me.” </em>The weight of the hands resting on the edge of my bed shifted and slid closer. </p><p>“<em>Your hands. They could look like mine… You already know what your hands look like… And I can see them too… Clear as day… they could be the same as mine…" </em>But I knew in my heart that wasn’t true, because what touched my fingers then was <em> nothing </em> like my hands, and I very nearly opened my eyes in shock, because what touched me was cold. Cold without a trace of having ever been warm. And it was soft, but soft in the way that a rotting fruit is soft. Held together by a fragile membrane of skin, the only barrier keeping its putrid insides from spilling forth. If that membrane were to split…</p><p>Something akin to fingers curled around my own and I wanted to shudder. It felt like all the things I imagined it would be, and more. Tired, like there was barely any strength in them as they held my hand, but they held it anyway. Deceitful, because I could feel in my bones that the tenderness it offered was false. Incomplete, it was lacking in so many things...</p><p>“<em>So soft… warm… You don’t like my hands… do you?” </em></p><p>They already knew how I felt about their hands. They didn’t need me to say anything, they never really seemed to need me to say anything. Those strange almost-fingers tightened around my hand, squeezing to the point of pain, but that didn’t bother me as much as the sensation of that soft, <em> wrong </em> flesh shifting against my skin, like it sat far too loose over the bones that it held together. They were falling apart, truly. I was waiting for the moment the meat would slough off onto my hand and stay there. </p><p>“<em>My hands must be ugly…” </em> The voice concluded matter of factly. Like it wasn’t surprised, or bothered by this revelation. Those terrible fingers wormed their way between mine, invading my sheltered palm, ceaseless in their movement, searching for something, wanting to hold. “<em>Perhaps the rest of me is ugly too… My eyes… my face… Will you scream, when you see it? I wonder what that would sound like…” </em></p><p>I wanted nothing more than to rip my hand away, but I couldn’t move. </p><p>The hand that clung to mine, the horrid skin with too much give, the much too soft flesh underneath it, <em> pulsed </em>, and that was the final straw for me. My eyes flew open, and the sight of my empty bedroom came into view immediately. Not a hair out of place… But my hand… </p><p>I could still feel it…</p><p>I didn’t dare look.</p><p>The conscious squeeze of fingers around mine had vanished, but like I feared, a piece remained. Like the skin around their hand had come off and stuck to mine. I wanted to close my eyes again, but I didn’t dare. My fingers curled around the mush, gathering it up, tucking it into my palm and hiding it away in my fist. </p><p>
  <em> Don’t worry… We still have plenty of time… </em>
</p><p>In my head this time, not aloud, the voice whispered, and as I watched, the oppressive darkness in the hallway retreated.</p><p>I could have sworn I saw a shape moving among those shadows… Tall enough that its neck had been bent against the ceiling, its head shunted to one side. And eyes… </p><p>I never wanted to see those eyes again… but something told me I would anyway.</p>
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